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By shining a spotlight on what would normally be an internal process decision, Ocasio-Cortez has turned the Green New Deal Committee creation into a referendum on the populist progressive agenda.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t yet been sworn in as a representative in Congress, but she’s already making waves in Washington, D.C. Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez joined a group of protesters from the climate justice group Sunrise Movement at the D.C. offices of Nancy Pelosi. The protesters were demanding that the likely next Speaker of the House create a Select Committee with a mandate to draft legislation for a bold Green New Deal to tackle climate change by 2020. Ocasio-Cortez followed up the action by releasing a specific resolution for the creation of the Select Committee.

While protests targeting members of Congress are not unusual, it is extremely uncommon for them to include fellow elected representatives, particularly someone fresh to their office. Many liberal pundits reacted negatively to Ocasio-Cortez’s participation, accusing her of grandstanding rather than engaging in productive collaboration with her new colleagues.

But Ocasio-Cortez’s actions actually demonstrate a highly sophisticated strategy—both for advancing policy and for building power in Washington.

A Green New Deal is not a cautious policy proposal—it involves implementing a massive public works program with the goal of radically overhauling the United States’ infrastructure to produce 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years. It also includes ambitious proposals for eliminating poverty and significantly decreasing economic inequality through policies like a federal jobs guarantee and a universal basic income. If you believe, as the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns, that climate change is an impending, existential threat, the Green New Deal is a policy that matches the scope and urgency of the challenge.

Passing legislation of this magnitude will be a massive undertaking, both in hammering out the policy specifics and building buy-in for the proposal. It took Democrats nearly a year to pass the Affordable Care Act, even with control of both chambers of Congress. If Democrats are able to take back the Senate and the presidency in 2020, even if they immediately started work on a Green New Deal as their top priority, there’s a good chance nothing close to the policy would be passed until 2022 or later. By creating a Select Committee now, Democrats can get a jump start on figuring out what actually goes into a Green New Deal and building support among legislators to move quickly toward enacting it once they regain power.

But beyond the policy rationale, Ocasio-Cortez’s push for a Green New Deal is also smart politics. The Representative-elect has quickly become a leading figure for populist Democrats who are advocating a far more radical approach to policy-making than the incrementalism typically seen in Congress. With signs that likely-Speaker Pelosi is planning to legislate with a conservative approach, many on the Left fear the momentum they’ve been building through movement organizing and elections of insurgent candidates will not translate into a bold Democratic agenda.

In a system based on seniority for determining Congressional Committee assignments, Ocasio-Cortez has very little procedural power as a legislator to influence the party’s agenda. If she were to follow the typical path for a newly elected member of Congress, it would be years before she would have any significant influence on larger decisions. But her massive popular support could potentially translate into a different kind of power that exists outside of traditional congressional operations.

By shining a spotlight on what would normally be an internal process decision, Ocasio-Cortez has turned the Green New Deal Committee creation into a referendum on the populist progressive agenda. While creating the committee is a fairly modest ask in practical terms (since it doesn’t involve actually enacting legislation), it now has significant implications around the message it sends on how big the Democratic Party will go. With Democrats alone controlling committee decisions, Pelosi and other Democratic representatives now must choose whether to embrace the left wing of the party by creating the committee or to reject it—and run the risk of losing donations, votes, and perhaps even primary elections, as Ocasio-Cortez herself demonstrated by defeating Rep. Joe Crowley, previous Chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Critics of Ocasio-Cortez’s actions often seem put off or confused that she would take such a confrontational approach as a new legislator, rather than putting in her dues by following a more traditional path. But this perspective misses the fact that Ocasio-Cortez’s election was a clear mandate for more radical politics—an activist outsider with a bold agenda unseating a senior party insider representing politics-as-usual. She rightly believes she has a responsibility to go big, using whatever tools are available to her. And if she can win a victory right out of the gate, it will create momentum for the many political fights to come.

So far, the approach seems to be working. Fifteen House representatives have already come on board to endorse the creation of the Select Committee for a Green New Deal, giving the proposal a big boost in legitimacy. Whether or not Rep. Pelosi will ultimately back the effort remains to be seen, but one thing is already clear—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is changing the status quo Washington.

Genius and this woman's name should not be used in the same sentence, oranywhere for that matter,

Posted by Yshaggy shag on 2018-12-06 20:13:24

Jill Stein's been talking about the Green New Deal for years. Nobody called it "genius" until a Dem proposed it.

Posted by IndieOne on 2018-12-03 10:59:06

It would be fantastic if everyone who wanted a progressive agenda learned our federal financing...MMT. We should be learning that taxes never fund federal spends..anything Congress appropriates for, gets funded..anything..even single payer...AOC knows and that's all I need to know for now.

Posted by Kathy Bassett on 2018-11-30 12:30:02

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Posted by Gena F. Patterson on 2018-11-30 11:23:06

You mean the pop culture meme populism, a throwaway terminology. While useful for quick discussion with strangers on a train or bogeyman creation, I do not value that interpretation of the term.

My interpretation comes by way of serious (not pop culture as in Muller) books on the forces behind periods of world history (not US). Thus we differ, and so you resorted to a silly nitpick on FDR. Simply put populism cannot be "rejected" because it is not characteristically one thing. If you do so because you claim it is always neither democratic nor pluralist as Muller suggests, name something that you think IS purely and always democratic or pluralist. Even free speech, the epitome of pluralism, has people (perhaps you) attacking it.

PS I don't overlook you earlier took a swing at my head re "14 year old" now you try to engage by referring me to a pop culture book written to take advantage of a current hot topic for pulp sellers. Believe me, I can see I'll be knocking you all over the forum here until I get tired of this rag.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 23:37:15

I understand your basic point, John, and it's not without truth, but you're quite wrong to consider tRump just a distraction rather than a significant menace

and you're a fool to consider the sustained campaign of interference in our politics by the ex-KGB officer Putin to be insignificant. if you maintain that position you might deserve to be called a Russian bot.

the Russians have a long history of such interference and Putin is determined that while the USSR may have died, the disinformation and subversion shall continue

Posted by fuster on 2018-11-29 23:10:08

To hell with the choir, the choir are so out of ideas for progress they call me a Russian bot in the Washington Post. I reject the "defend mediocrity" theory. I reject any softening of a hard review of how we got to where we are now, because truthfully stating how we got here is how we step forward to some place better.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 22:54:05

I'd be guessing and it really doesn't matter if she does or not.

The real problem is that smart progressives who know history are too few, and too many otherwise decent Democrats buy into the distraction of the Trump Derangement claptrap & Russia claptrap. The media who sell that claptrap call regular progressive positions radical. So, I get called a Russian bot all the time by Liberals spoon fed by MSNBC & CNN. That is, average Liberals have no ideals learned from reading history, they just have bogeymen put in their heads by corporate media.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 22:37:56

I am am well-versed in American political history. It's that reading which makes me wary of populism, which rarely takes the Capra-esque form of "small guy civic engagement." (If that's your idea of populism, then populism is anything that you say it is.) The New Deal is a perfect example of exclusionary populism from the left. New Deal programs were uniformly either segregated or white-only -- hence, African-Americans were not among "the people".

While there is no unifying theory of populism, it is in general typified by demagoguery, resentment toward an elite, and mass clientilism. For an assessment of contemporary populism, I refer you to Jan-Werner Muller's extended essay "What Is Populism?"

Posted by Paul Goode on 2018-11-29 22:35:16

No reason to attack the choir, John. I agree with most of what you say. Inability of liberals -- check, Wellstone -- check, and so on and so on. It's a bit early to attack AOC for all the problems of the centrist neolibs. Give her a chance to unpack her clothes before you beat her down for not standing up to one of the most powerful and corrupt organizations on this Earth. Please? Take a breath.

The inept Democrats could wind up with a Republican speaker if they play it wrong. Par for the course.

Posted by Cadmiam on 2018-11-29 15:58:58

you think that Ocasio-Cortez has any long run in her?

Posted by fuster on 2018-11-29 15:34:21

If you read history as you grow up you will find that "populism" is not characterized by either Left or Right starting positions. It maybe be small-guy civic engagement, it may be reactionary law & order mob behavior. It may be the salt of the Earth, it may be the Great Unwashed it may be students or the Right Wing.

Both FDR and A certain German dictator were "populist" as was Jackson & Teddy R. It has a bad name when the uprising is distasteful to the observer and a good name when it is a welcome relief of the oppression of the status quo. Populism does not have to be the least bit anti-democratic, as we see when it happens in a totalitarian state within popular democracy movement.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 12:30:59

You may want to do some homework. She represents the 14th District, no Amazon there. You are swinging a bat in the dark and resorting to name calling, that qualifies distinctly, as stupid.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 12:20:53

Actually because the problem for liberal progress is intrinsic to the Democrat machine, you must start inside the Democrat machine. Trump is a symptom of Neoliberal rot, where Liberals stop voting because the Democrat Party is just a version of the GOP. So yeah you are smart to encourage bright well meaning honorable youth to do a sit-in, absolutely. And she tiptoed through it very carefully, and it probably did her more good in the long run than any amount of pandering to a has-been Pelosi.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-29 12:15:28

Son, I get it — I was like you when I was 14 years old too. But the world is a complicated place filled with difficult decisions. It’s not a good habit to judge yourself or anyone else on the basis of one of them.

Posted by Paul Goode on 2018-11-29 06:46:51

I’m lost as to how this has anything to do with populism. Want to endanger progressive goals? Slot them as a populist litmus test. That way, those of us who agree with the policy but regard populism as fundamentally anti-democratic will have to make a needless choice between the ends and the means.

Posted by Paul Goode on 2018-11-29 06:44:45

This is a joke right. She claimed to hate big business but... her district now has amazon moving in. She wanted to change politics... yet she sided with pelosi. You have 2 be blind not to see she is doing this for a paycheck. A girl who has only has one part time job her entire life making decisions like that is stupid and people who voted for her are stupid.

Posted by billo on 2018-11-28 23:07:16

she's not likely to go far to the right.she'll certainly not accomplish much of anything in Congress unless she compromises ... you don't get anywhere at all when you encourage people to hold sit-in in other Congressperson's offices

Posted by fuster on 2018-11-28 16:33:04

Campaign Left, go hard Right as soon as you are elected.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-28 12:38:52

Wrong. If one has any integrity, one may as well make it look BAD. Don't claim you understand my concern, if you understood my concern you'd agree not equivocate like a tool.

In 2020 we will see Prog Wave 2.0, and THEN Pelosi will be out. That's two years of moribund corporate Neoliberal whitewash that we do not need. All this is is Insurers and defense contractors playing master puppeteer using Pelosi, who should be SUPPORTING a young face.The inability of so called Liberals to see past the gaslighting is dismaying. Democrats want to live on their knees, they are cowards. It's a damned shame Paul Wellstone died in that place crash, he was the last voice of progressive integrity.

Posted by John Smith on 2018-11-28 12:38:15

Pelosi IS the most liberal Democrat running. Sad? Yes. But true. There is no one else to vote for. If the choice is already made, may as well make it look good. It takes more than four leftwing Representatives to mount a left-based run for the speaker. AOC is not just smooth and smart, she's strategic too. I understand your concern. AOC's voters are not angry over this. They're smart too. We know; they elected her.

What good would it do? It would show some guts, independence, and intelligence. It would respect her voters wishes. Angering? You think a superstar new face that will be in for 20 years office after Pelosi is dead should worry about angering her? And what right does Pelosi have to be angry over a show of integrity? This is Pelosi making AOC wet her panties and putting her in her place. My god you'd show your hand at poker in Vegas so the house doesn't get "angry."

Face it, you are a frightened fanboy not a thinker. There is nothing but upside to being strong re one's values, nothing but downside to being a tool. And for the record Pelosi needs AOC more than AOC need Pelosi, who will be out of the Speaker position in any case right after a progressive, or Trump, wins the Presidency in 2020.

I'm no fan of Pelosi, but it makes sense for AOC to endorse her when there is no one running against Pelosi (even those considering challenging Pelosi would be doing so from the right wing of the Democratic party). What good would angering one of the most powerful Democrats from the get-go do? AOC is playing it smart.

Posted by Sam Payne on 2018-11-27 17:55:46

AOC is supporting Pelosi for Speaker, she's bought off already. She could resist Pelosi, then support her should she win, instead she's folding like a lawn chair from the start.